Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Linux not touching Windows anytime soon

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Linux not touching Windows anytime soon

TAGS: Open Source

eWeek's Peter Galli is at the Gartner Open Source Summit, and is reporting on Gartner's George Weiss' session, "Enterprise Linux: Has It Arrived?" Incredibly, the answer is, "Not yet, and not for awhile."

I say "incredibly" because of the following research from Gartner and others:

• Â?Open source software solutions will directly compete with closed-source products in all software infrastructure markets.Â? (Gartner, 2005)
  
• By 2008, 95% of Global 2000 organizations will have formal open source acquisition and management strategies. (Gartner, 2005)
  
• Today, 81% of companies have deployed or are considering deploying open source applications (CIO Insight, 2005) and
  
• 72% plan to expand its use (CIO Insight, 2005). Why? Because
  
• 65% say open source has sparked innovation inside their companies (CIO Insight, 2005) and
  
• 67% turn to open source primarily for lowered costs (CIO Insight, 2005)

But that's not Linux, you say. Well, the last survey on enterprise LInux that I saw (Salomon Smith Barney, 2003, if I'm remembering correctly) had Linux penetration in the Fortune 1000 at roughly 100%. That's not to say that every enterprise was using it heavily, but it at least had a beachhead somewhere in every/nearly every enterprise. Today, I'm confident that those implementations have reached 100% of the Global 2000, with usage ramping.

But I digress. Back to George Weiss, as quoted by Galli:

...[I]n terms of worldwide server operating system revenue, Linux [will] come in below both Windows and Unix by 2011 in spite of its enormous growth....

While Linux [will] account for some $12 billion in worldwide server operating system revenue in five years time, significantly up from the $8.3 billion predicted for 2006, Unix worldwide server operating system revenue was expected to come in at $15.9 billion by 2011, with Windows revenue leading the pack at $22.5 billion....

Unix, in fact, won't start to decline until 2011, thanks to heady progress by Sun.

What is George's conclusion?

In conclusion, Weiss said that Unix is not dead but new implementations would decline. Xen's adoption success will depend on the development of management and automation tools from the system vendors and third-party software firms, he said, and more focus will shift from islands of Linux to interoperability, management and open source.

Microsoft is also expected to be relatively slow to change its fundamental business and support strategies to cope with the open-source world, and Red Hat's quest for ongoing dominance would face threats from its own partners as it pursues a wider ranging business model.

So, there you have it. If anything, it just goes to show how slowly things move in enterprise IT. You can have an absolutely huge trend like open source, with Linux as a major poster child for it, take years (decades?) to displace the proprietary competition. I guess the upside is that it means there's lots of time, and lots of money, to profit from the trend.

In other words, you still have time to start that company you've been wanting to start. So do it.

Posted by Matt Asay on September 29, 2006 05:17 AM

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